Democratic Consolidation and Political Parties in Russia

The 3 rd International Conference of the HK RussiaㆍEurasia Research Project 20 Years since the Disintegration of the Soviet Union: Looking Backward, Looking Forward Session II: The Evolution of the Dissolution : a Balance Sheet between 1991 and 2011 Democratic Consolidation and Political Parties in Russia Paper presented at the conference "20 Years since the Disintegration of the Soviet Union: Looking Backward, Looking Forward," Asia-Pacific Research Center, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea October 6-7, 2011 Ko, Sangtu Professor, Graduate Program of Area Studies, Yonsei Univ. stko@yonsei.ac.kr

87 Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma Ko, Sangtu Introduction Russian Duma elections have always revealed surprises to observers. The 1993 election ended in the triumph of Zhirinovsky s LDPR. In 1995 election, the Communists won an overwhelming victory. In 2003, the United Russia almost gained the majority for the first time as the party of power. It further secured the two thirds of the Duma seats in 2007. Richard Rose terms this phenomenon floating party system. In a floating party system, the parties competing for popular support change from one election to the next. Some parties disappear, new parties appear, others alter their names. Accountability is not meaningful when voters can neither reaffirm nor withdraw their support from the party for which they voted at the previous election. The floating party system impedes the formation of political institutions necessary to create an accountable democracy (Rose, 2001). Against this perspective, Stephen Whitefield takes a relatively optimistic view of the prospects for party formation and consolidation in Russia. He agrees that governments are not formed on the basis of party allegiance, and that neither of the two presidents was elected on the basis of party identification. However he examined ideological and social divisions within Russian society and argues that the weakness of political parties is not because voters do not know how to find parties of their preferences. Most Russians identify themselves with a set of political principles or ideology. The social divisions are created based on the different experiences of the public. The clearly different experiences particularly in the economic reform period are the main sources of the social division. The number of Russians able and willing to nominate a party with which they politically identify has grown considerably over time. Socially differentiated Russians are able to link their experiences with ideological programs and again to link each of these to their choice of parties in ways that produce clear but growing political divisions (Miller and Klobucar, 2000). Whitefield found out a spectrum of public opinion, which at the one axis produces clusters of pro-market, pro-western, and pro-liberal positions and at the other axis anti-market, anti- Western, and illiberal views. Supporters of the market are supporters of liberal and pro-western position, while opponents of the market make their commitment to illiberal and anti-western The 3rd International Conference of the HK Russia ㆍ Eurasia Research Project

Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma 88 position. He concludes that Russian parties respond to this kind of social division. (Whitefield, 2001) The two perspectives focus on the different side of Russian party system. Richard Rose analyses the supply side of the party system and argues that Russian elites have not been forced to work accountable to the electorates, whereas Stephen Whitefield deals with the demand side of the party system and argues that due to significant social and ideological divisions to partisanship, elites have enough motive to build ties to the population. Notwithstanding this difference, the both perspectives agree that the Russian party system is weak and stands at the initial stage of its development. They accept that political parties in post- Communist Russia are weak on many dimensions. But, not all parties might be weak. This point can connect the two positions. From this point of view, this paper tries to examine features of the Russian parties and classifies them. Research questions are whether the Russian party system is consolidated or not? How it is on the way to the consolidation? What parties are established? For the classification, some criteria are needed. Whereas the theory of the floating party system is supply driven and the theory of social division to party choice is that the parties respond to the ideological demand of the electorate, this paper focuses on the inside of the Russian parties and analyses their organizational strength. The organization criteria will also help classify the Russian parties into three groups, namely established, transitory and ephemeral parties. This study has the following structure. The first section will elaborate on a conceptual framework to classify the Russian parties. The next sections examine the three types of the Russian party. The Analysis on the organizational dimensions of party weakness will help divide the parties into the three types. Many theories concerning the Russian party system deal with either demand or supply side of the party. Compared to them, this study touches the inside of the party. Conceptual Framework of the Russian Party System Most Russian parties are weak in terms of organization. It is mostly due to the legacy of Soviet party politics. The very concept of party has discredited after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the party was omnipresent throughout everyday lives in the Soviet era. In NRB surveys, political parties are consistently the most distrusted of all institutions in society, and the Duma comes a close second(rose, Tikhomirov and Mishler 1997). This legacy has negatively affected the development of party system in Russia. First, the Party is not responsible to governing. The president is not required to be a party nominee and does not need the support of a majority of members in the Duma. In Russia the link between

Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma 89 government and parliament is loose. Second, the party is actually a blur concept in the Russian Parliament. The movement, which gathered a high level of support from radical critics of Communism in the last years of the Soviet Union, Democratic Russia, did not turn itself into a political party(urban 1992). In 1999, the Unity party was not formally registered as a political party. It was an amalgam of seven associations. The Fatherland party combined five different associations. The Union of Right Forces brought together four associations and the Zhirinovsky Bloc two associations. Third, Russian parties try to claim to represent everyone. Especially, the party of power often uses this strategy of fuzzy-focus party. The party names such as Russia s Choice, Our Home Is Russia, and United Russia do not reveal any ideological direction. United Russia succeeded in gaining votes by appearing as fuzzy-focus party by campaigning in favor of political stability and pragmatism. And Putin sought nationalist support by attacking Mikhail Gorbachev for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moreover, United Russia paraded its support for the war in Chechnya. Many of supports for the Communist drifted to Unity, an indication of the success of the latter s fuzzy-focus appeal to Russians(Rose, 2001). The weak position of the party in the Russian politics leads to the strong representation of Independents in Duma. Independent candidates far outnumbered party standard-bearers. There were 873 independent candidates wining 45.2% of the vote in 1993 and 1055 with 31% of the votes in 1995. The independents have won between the one third and half of seats from the single-member districts of the Duma election. If we take a close look at the political party system in Duma, we can find different groups of parties. There are some established parties. There are parties of a transitory character. These parties continually regroup themselves and change their names. There are a plentitude of ephemeral parties. They often fail to clear the threshold in Russian Duma and gain seats in the party representation system. In this respect, the Russian Duma is a house, which is built on three pillars. Established parties constitute a strong pillar while ephemeral parties build a weak pillar. Transitory parties stand in the between. This paper chose three criteria to investigate Russian parties and classify them into the above mentioned three categories, namely established, transitory and ephemeral party. The first criterion is the persistence of parties, which concerns the time dimension. Established Parties have participated in all elections, while transitory and ephemeral parties appear in one election and disappear in another election. <Figure 1> Conceptual Framework for Party Classification

Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma 90 The second criterion is party coherence. In parliament, many parties are undisciplined and Duma members easily change their parties. The pattern of faction building in Duma will explain to some extent the party discipline. The third criterion is regional representation. From geographical viewpoint, this is the means to assess how broadly parties are supported by the public. Organizational Base of Russian parties Persistence of Parties The Russian electoral system has drastically changed in 2005 on the initiative of President Putin, who claimed that reducing the number of parties in Duma would strengthen the Russian party system. Until 2003 election, a hybrid system was applied. It means that half the 450 seats were distributed in single-member districts and the other half seats were competed on the basis of a party list. Under the new election law all seats in Duma are awarded exclusively from party lists and the threshold for eligibility to win seats is raised to 7%(Moraski 2007). < Table 1> Russia's appearing and disappearing parties (Number of Seats) Party 1993 1995 1999 2003 2007 Contesting 5 elections Communist Party 42 157 114 52 57

Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma 91 Liberal Democratic Party 64 51 17 36 40 Contesting 4 elections Yabloko 27 45 21 4 Contesting 3 elections Agrarian Party 38 20 2 Contesting 2 elections United Russia 222 315 Union of Rightist's Force 29 3 Women's Party 23 3 Our Home is Russia 55 8 Russia's Choice 62 9 Russian Unity and Harmony 22 1 Contesting 1 election Just Russia 38 Democratic Party 15 Homeland party(rodina) 37 Unity Party(Medved) 73 Fatherland All Russia 66 independents 135 77 113 68 Others 16 32 9 23 Total 444 450 450 450 450 Source: www.parties-and-elections.de/russia2.htm. As the table 1 indicates the Communist party and the Liberal Democratic party (LDPR) have successfully contested all the five elections held after the building of Russian state. In this sense the two parties can be called the established party. However, each party accounts for around 10% of the Duma seats today. The Communist party reached the highest record of 157 seats in 1995 when Russians suffered from the radical market reform. But its seats have continually decreased from 114 in 1999 and 52 in 2003 and eventually come to 57 in 2007. Compared to the Communist party the LDPR shows a relative stability of its seats won by five elections except the 1999 election. The Yabloko contested 4 elections and can also be characterized as the established party. It drastically lost its visibility in the 2003 election by gaining only 4 seats and eventually could not enter the 2007 Duma. The Agrarian party contested 3 elections but it contested one more election in 1999 by changing its name into Fatherland party. It also failed to come into the Duma like the Yabloko in 2007. Thus, the Yabloko and the Agrarian party are the established

Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma 92 party, which disappeared in the Russian party system. They are not likely to return to the Duma in this year s election due to the high threshold. The parties that contested 1-2 elections include the transitory party and the ephemeral party. The parties that pursue the party of power can be classified into the transitory party. Russia s Choice and Our Home Is Russia and United Russia survived in two elections and Unity party contested only one election. They are the party of power in their character and are transitory in this sense. Russia s Choice was led by Gaidar, who worked for Yeltsin with the radical market reform. It showed a poor performance in the 1993 election and gave its position of power party to Our Home Is Russia under Chernomirdin that failed to win again in the 1995 election. In 1999 election, two parties that supported Yeltsin emerged. Those who sought to promote the reformist agenda of the Yeltsin era organized the Union of Right Forces which was led by Anatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar, Boris Nemtsov, and Vladimir Potanin. At the end of the summer, after Vladimir Putin had become prime minister, another pro-kremlin party, Unity party(medved) was formed(colton and McFaul 2003). The phenomenon that two parties were formed in favor of Yeltsin in 1999 was the reaction to the alliance of local politicians. Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov organized Fatherland party and allied with a number of governors who shared the desire to decentralize power. The continuing unpopularity of Yeltsin encouraged Primakov to join the party. After the unexpected defeat in 1999 election, Fatherland merged with Unity into United Russia. The United party is the first party of power that has consecutively gained a majority in the Duma. It secured an absolute majority in 2007 election. Thus it came from transitory party but on the way toward the established party. The other parties disappeared only after one election and they are regarded as ephemeral. Women s party showed its visibility just by winning 23 seats in 1993 election. Russian Unity and Harmony won 22 seats and Democratic party won 15 seats in the same election. There were a number of ephemeral parties in the founding election. Just Russia emerged as a new party in the 2007 election. It advocates social democracy. The Duma election of this year will show whether it is ephemeral or not. Coherence of Parties There is a disjunction between electoral parties and Duma parties. Victorious candidates often change their party in whose name they stood when seeking election immediately after entering Duma. Especially, many of independents from single-member districts either join parties or build new parties, which are called convenience parties. This phenomenon was encouraged by the Duma rule that allowed faction members to enjoy greater advantages in office facilities and

Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma 93 committee assignments. Forming a faction in Duma needs at least 35 Duma members that means 7.8 percent of the assembly s total seats(smith and Remington, 2001). <Table 2> Party Alignments in December 1995 Duma Party Election Duma opening Change Communists 157 149-8 Our Home Is Russia 55 66 +11 Liberal Democrats 51 51 0 Yabloko 45 46 +1 Agrarians 20 35 +15 Russia s Regions 0 40 +40 People s Power 0 38 +38 Power to the people! 9 0-9 Russia s Choice 9 0-9 Russian Communities: Lebed 5 0-5 Women of Russia 3 0-3 Forward, Russia! 3 0-3 Ivan Rybkin Bloc 3 0-3 Minor parties 13 0-13 Independents 77 25-52 Source: Central Electoral Commission, http://gd1995.cikrf.ru. As the table 2 shows, 105 deputies switched parties between the election of December 1995 and the opening Duma in the following month. To qualify as a Duma faction, the Agrarian Party recruited some independents and borrowed additional members from the Communist Party. Independents formed two factions, namely Russia s Regions and People s Power. Some Communist deputies also joined these new convenience parties in order to help them qualify as a Duma party. This evidence shows that established parties do not suffer from party indiscipline of their members. But many Duma members of minor parties leave their organization shortly after the election and weaken the position of the ephemeral party. <Table 3> Party Alignments in December 2003 Duma Seats Election: 03. 12. 2003 Duma opening: 29. 12. 2003 Change United Russia 222 300 78 Communists 52 52 0

Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma 94 Liberal Democrats 36 36 0 Motherland 37 36-1 Minor parties 32 - -32 Independents 68 23 2-45 Source: Central Electoral Commission, http://gd2003.cikrf.ru. In 2003 United Russia increased its seats in Duma from 222 won by election to 300 at the opening of the parliament. It expanded 78 seats in three weeks. It attracted 13 members from the People s Party, 3 from Union of Right Forces, 2 Agrarian Party deputies, 1 from Yabloko and 1 from the Pensioners Party. 66 independents joined United Russia. United Russia greatly succeeded in taking advantage of the position of power party and gained profits from the faction building after election than other established parties. In 2007 election, the change of Duma seats did not take place, because Duma seats were not allocated exclusively by proportional representation. Under the new election law any members who change their party should automatically lose their seats. Regional Representation The single-member system applied until 2003 election encourages parties to nominate candidates to contest districts nationwide. However, no party contested as many as half the 225 single-member districts. Even large parties had weak organizational bases outside Moscow. An exception was the Communists. In 1993, the Communist Party nominated its candidates in 98 districts, and Russia s Choice nominated only 88 candidates. In 1995 the Communist Party nominated 130 candidates, and Our Home Is Russia nominated 103 candidates. (Rose and Munro, 2001) In the 1999 election, the Communist Party contested almost two-thirds of the single-member districts, and two other parties, Yabloko and the right-wing Spiritual Heritage group, contested half the seats. The Unity party closest to Vladimir Putin had small number of seats contested nationwide. It made every effort to gain local supports but could nominate candidates in only one-sixth of the single-member districts. Moreover it showed little presence outside Moscow and thus a great discrepancy between the two ballots: it won only nine single-member district seats while taking 64 list seats (Rose, 2001). Conclusion As examined above, Russian parties are weak. But, we should not exaggerate the weakness of

Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma 95 parties. In terms of party organization, there are weak and strong parties together in Duma. The parties can be divided into three classes, which can be called three pillars of Duma. The Communist Party, the LDPR, Yabloko and the Agrarian party are grouped into the established party. But their organization has been weakening and Yabloko and the Agrarian party disappeared in the last election. The strong pillar of the Russian Duma is eroding. The party of power has transitory character. Power elites in Russia organized Russia s Choice in 1993, which was changed into Our Home Is Russia in 1995. The Unity Party and the Union of Right Forces in 1999 were reorganized into United Russia in 2003. United Russia got a landslide victory in 2007 election and showed the possibility of being the established party. With this the party of power is expected to build the strong pillar of Duma. The weakness of the Russian party system produced a number of the ephemeral party in Duma. But the electoral law passed in 2005 that included the clauses such as high threshold and proportional representation undermined the ephemeral party. The political system in the Russian Duma has been consolidated as the four party system is created today. <Reference> Brader, Ted and Joshua A. Tucker, The Emergence of Mass Partisanship in Russia, 1993-1996, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2001. Clark, William A., Communist Devolution: The Electoral Decline of the KPRF, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 53, No. 1, 2006. Colton, Timothy and Michael McFaul, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: the Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2003) Gelman, Vladimir, From Feckless Pluralism to Dominant Power Politics? The Transformation of Russia s Party System, Democratization, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2006. Geoffrey Evans and Stephen Whitefield, Identifying the Bases of Party Competition in Eastern Europe, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 23, no. 4, 1993 Hutcheson, Derek S, Protest and Disengagement in the Russian Federal Elections of 2003-04, Perspective on European Politics and Society, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2004. Michael McFaul, Russia s Choices. The Perils of Evolutionary Democracy, Timothy Colton

Democratic Consolidation and the Party System in the Russian Duma 96 and Jerry Hough (eds.) Growing Pains. Russian Democracy and the Election of 1993 (Washington DC: Brookings Inst. Press, 1998) Miller, Arthur and Thomas F. Klobucar, The Development of Party Identification in Post- Soviet Societies, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 44, No. 4, 2000. Moraski, Bryon, Electoral System Reform in Democracy s Grey Zone: Lessons from Putin s Russia, Government and Opposition, vol. 42, no. 4, 2007. Rose, Richard and Neil Munro, Elections in the Russian Federation, (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 2001) Rose, Richard, How Floating Parties frustrate Democratic Accountability: A Supply-side View of Russia s Elections, in Achie Brown (ed) Contemporary Russian Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) Smith, Steven and Thomas Remington, The Politics of Institutional Choice: The Formation of the Russian State Duma, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) Stephen Whitefield and Geoffrey Evans, The Emerging Structure of Partisan Development in Post-Soviet Russia, in Matthew Wyman, Stephen White, and Sarah Oates, eds., Elections and Voters in Post-Communist Russia (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998) Urban, Michael, Boris El tsin Democratic Russia and the Campaign for the Russian Presidency, Soviet Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, 1992. White, David, Going Their Own Way: The Yabloko Party s Opposition to Unification, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol. 21, No. 4, 2005. Whitefield, Stephen, Partisan and Party Divisions in Post-Communist Russia, in Achie Brown (ed) Contemporary Russian Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) Central Electoral Commission, http://gd1995.cikrf.ru. Central Electoral Commission, http://gd2003.cikrf.ru. GENIS, www.parties-and-elections.de/russia2.htm.